Episode 64

The Sword and Scale true-crime podcast is an immersive audio experience covering the dark side of humanity and human nature. Our stories delve into the worst of the worst and include murder, rape, dismemberment and cannibalism. No crime is too brutal and no victim is too pure. The worst monsters are real.

After Michelle Macneill, a healthy 50-year old mother, dies mysteriously of a heart condition in the bathtub of her Pleasant Grove, Utah home, questions begin to emerge. Her husband, Martin Macneill, begins to exhibit strange behavior even on the very day of his wife's death. Soon afterwards, a nanny is introduced into the family home and a sordid affair is revealed, along with a motive for murder.

Related episodes Sword and Scale

Pleasant Grove, Utah. A picturesque gated community. A perfectly manicured lawn. A lovely brick home. The perfect family. The perfect life. A bathtub.
This is the story of Martin Macneill, and his late wife Michelle....

A 30-year-old woman named Jenelle Potter has spent her entire life sheltered from the world. Not being allowed to get a job, drive a car, date, or even leave the house without the supervision of her mother Barbara, Jenelle turns to the Internet and social media as her only escape. However her lack of real-world social skills translate to disaster online. She starts making enemies just as fast as she makes friends and eventually the online feuds turn vicious.
When her mother Barbara and her father Buddy, an...

Every parent's nightmare can happen in an instant. It can happen on a day just like any other in a place you would never expect and, the fact of the matter is, you will never see it coming.
Such is what happened to the family of 9-year-old Connor Verkerke. One moment everything was fine; it was a beautiful late summer day and kids were playing in the local playground. The next minute, all hell broke loose.
But this tragedy wasn't exclusive to Connor and his family. The story of 12-year-old Jamarion Lawhor...

Alternative rock superstar, host of the reality TV-show Ink Master, actor and recent filmmaker Dave Navarro joins us to talk about his film "Mourning Son" which details the events leading up to and surrounding his mother's brutal murder when he was just 15 years old.
We're also joined by Cameka Crawford, Chief Communications Officer at the National Domestic Violence Hotline and steering committee member for NOMORE.org, to talk about this epidemic which affects an alarming number of people.
To highlight th...

When many of us think of true-crime, we think of cops and killers, detectives and victims. We even spend a great deal of time examining medical forensics and human decomposition. Rarely do we shift our focus to the paramedics who work tirelessly every day and night, sometimes at great personal risk to themselves, to save the lives of victims of horrific crimes.
In this episode we'll do just that by speaking with former paramedic Kevin Hazzard. He wrote a phenomenal book called "A Thousand Naked Strangers: ...

Cathy Ruson from courtchatter.com describes Facebook Killer Derek Medina as "an odd duck." That's probably the most accurate way to describe this man, who shot his wife eight times in the kitchen of their South Florida home, while she was preparing breakfast for her 10-year-old daughter, and then posted a picture of his handiwork on Facebook for all of his friends and family to see. In this second part, to our two-part story, we get to know the strange man who for years seemed desperate for attention.
The ...

It's one thing to kill someone, it's quite another to publish your handiwork on social media for all your friends and family to see like some sort of macabre trophy. That's exactly what Facebook Killer Derek Medina did after killing his wife Jennifer Alfonso in the kitchen of their Miami condominium, while her 10-year-old daughter cowered upstairs under a red blanket. After shooting the unarmed woman eight times, in his words "emptying the clip", he went back upstairs and got dressed before taking a picture...

Over the course of the last year we've spoken to many different people from all walks of life. We asked them one simple question: "If there was one thing you could change about the criminal justice system, what would it be." This final episode of Season 2 is a compilation of their answers.
We're joined by criminal defense attorney Christopher Zervic, as well as the guys and gals from The Generation Why Podcast and the Thinking Sideways Podcast. The cast of guests includes: Jason Lucky Morrow from Historica...

The topic of abortion is a highly controversial one, with emotionally-charged opinions on either side. Regardless of how you feel about the topic, this story about abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell illustrates the workings of a man who has lost his humanity and no longer cares who he hurts on his path to profit.
The Women's Medical Society, the clinic with a grandiose name that Gosnell ran, was a pill mill by day and an illegal abortion clinic by night. It is estimated Gosnell earned well over a million dol...

There's something about the perceived safety of an automobile's cab that makes many of us feel like we are impervious to danger, yet danger is all around us. In this episode, we examine two cases which seemingly began with a road rage incident and ended with murder.
In the first case Robert Doyle shoots and kills Candelerio Gonzalez in front of his own home and then holds the victim's family at gunpoint. Case number two is the death of Tammy Myers at the hands of 19-year-old Erich Nowsche, a young man who ...

The stories we tell often tend to focus on the criminal act itself, rather than the investigation that follows. In this episode of Sword and Scale we'll show you how the human body often tells the tale of its final living moments in the form of forensic evidence, and what it takes to extract this information from a corpse.
We're joined by the husband and wife team Dr. Judy Melinek and TJ Mitchell, who co-authored the book "Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner." In it t...

It's one thing to talk about gun violence, it's quite another to see it up close on live television. In this episode of Sword and Scale we take you back to one of the first examples of a life being lost on live television: the suicide of Budd Dwyer, an American politician who had been convicted of bribe receiving. However, before his sentence of 55 years' imprisonment and a $300,000 fine could be imposed Dwyer chose to take his life with a blued Smith & Wesson Model 27 .357 Magnum revolver at a press conf...

In Episode 47 we told you about the McMartin Preschool case and the Satanic Panic that overtook an entire nation under the fear that our children are not safe. This week we are joined by Keelan Balderson from WideShut to cover a case that is hauntingly familiar, but occurring in modern-day Europe.
When Ella Draper met marijuana-advocate Abraham Christie her life, and the lives of her two young children, spiraled out of control. According to Mrs Justice Pauffley, the presiding judge in the case, Christie wa...

On November 18, 1978, in a remote settlement of northwestern Guyana, 909 Americans lost their lives in what is considered to be the largest mass suicide of the twentieth century. This compound, informally known as Jonestown, was established by a charismatic preacher named Jim Jones who led his People's Temple to their ultimate demise. In this episode, we welcome Julia Scheeres, author of the book "A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown", to tell us the story of how this story evolved into a tragedy...

On June 15th, 2015 an ominous message appeared on Facebook which sent friends and family into a panic. Their worst fears were realized when police entered the home of Claudinnea "Dee Dee" Blancharde and her disabled daughter Gypsy, and found the mother dead and the daughter missing. The killer seemed to be mocking concerned loved ones online, and immediately the most important concern was to make sure the poor sickly daughter was found and that she would be unharmed. Little did they know the web of lies ...

In Episode 48 we revisit many of the stories we've previously covered on Sword and Scale and fill you in on what has happened with in each case.
We start with alleged theater shooter Curtis Reeves who is accused of shooting and killing Chad Oulson after a disagreement about texting during the previews of a movie. We then move on to the story of Vince Li, a schizophrenic man who suddenly without provocation beheaded Timothy McLean on a Greyhound bus. Then we jump over to South Africa, for an update to the O...

The highly technological society in which we live obscures the fact the we are still a very primitive species. One which continues to fall under the spell of magical beliefs and mass hysteria. Although we'd like to think we have evolved, this story which mirrors the insanity of the Salem Witch Trials shows, that perhaps, we have not.
In the early 80's a madness was brewing. The rise of heavy metal music combined with the infiltration of demonic imagery into American homes in the form of VHS and Betamax vid...

Despite being a grown man, Joseph McEnroe still exhibits the same traits he did when he was just a little boy: He bottles up his frustrations until they explode in fits of violence. He also seems to have a hint of the same Nightingale Syndrome that his mother uses to justify her abhorrent dating behaviors. Joseph follows in her footsteps by meeting a series of strange women through his online fantasy writing group and then travelling to whatever city they're in an attempt to start a relationship. Many of th...

In this first part of a two-part story, we examine the Carnation Murders. This slaughtering of an entire family, by a seriously deranged couple, took place in 2007 in Carnation, Washington, a small rural town 25 miles east of Seattle. This story is told through the words of the man behind the trigger, as he's tries to make excuses and barter for his life.
As with all unspeakable acts such as this we are interested in finding out why this occurred, so we take a closer look at Joseph McEnroe's life and famil...

We live in a world where pregnant women have to fear going about their daily lives as they normally would because of the very real possibility that the unthinkable could happen to them at any time. It did to Michelle Wilkins, a mom who was trying to get some inexpensive baby clothes for her unborn daughter Aurora. Instead, what she got was a nightmare which unfolded on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon in Longmont, Colorado.
The person who perpetrated this heinous act wasn't a serial killer, drug addict, or ...

When Rodney Reed turned himself in to Bastrop Police, on what he though was a gun charge, little did he know he would be spending the next 17 years on Death Row for a crime he did not commit. However, that seems to be exactly what happened. He was charged, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Stacey Stites who he was having an affair with at the time. Unfortunately for Rodney, Stites was engaged to a Bastrop police officer named Jimmy Fennel who allegedly didn't take to kindly to his future wi...

The idea of ultimate justice is appealing to those of us who have strong empathy for victims in vicious and unspeakable crimes. However, the cost of implementing such an unyielding and unrepairable finality as taking someone's life, is that from time to time we'll make a mistake and get it wrong. The end result of a mistake like this is the execution of an innocent man. As a society are we so hungry for "justice" or perhaps "vengeance" that we are willing to accept the collateral damage that an imperfect sy...

Luckily there aren't very many examples of the perfect storm occurring in a community where a dysfunctional family, a broken child-protection agency, and a community that makes a series of unlucky decisions end with the death of a beautiful, happy and loving 5-year-old little girl. Episode 41, however, isn't one of them. On January 8th, 2015, Phoebe Jonchuck was thrown 62 feet off the Dick Misener Bridge in Tampa, Florida. As a result, she died at the hands of her father.
Her mother, on the other hand, was...

When asked to imagine the perfect place to perform serial murder most imagine something dark and creepy, but the truth of the matter is that the perfect place to kill is actually the same place in which most of us are born and die: a hospital.
This is a place where death is not only common, but expected. Many of the victims are already incapacited and there's a steady stream of them coming in each day. Not to mention the fact that the tools for killing are readily available in the form of various dangero...

Some things are hard to fathom, like why a young boy with his entire life ahead of him would choose to destroy it by an act of unspeakable violence towards the people that love and care for him most in the world: his parents. Yet, time after time, we see these angst ridden youth lose control of their developing minds and act out in a way that cannot be taken back and will not easily be forgiven or forgotten.
In this episode of Sword and Scale we cover two cases in the form of two shocking 911 calls, each o...